Each season is split into legs, with teams tasked to deduce clues, navigate themselves in foreign areas, interact with locals, perform physical and mental challenges, and travel by air, boat, car, taxi, and other modes of transport.

Teams are progressively eliminated at the end of most legs for being the last to arrive at designated Pit Stops.

On 25 January 2011, it was announced that Space in association with Disney was going to produce the third season of the Latin American version of the race, thus retitling the show to The Amazing Race, dropping the en Discovery Channel.

For the fourth season, a special Portuguese-language edition of the show, Edição Brasil, was made.

Each season is divided into a number of legs wherein teams travel and complete various tasks to obtain clues to help them progress to a Pit Stop where teams are given a chance to rest and recover before starting the next leg twelve hours later.

Participating countries include all citizens in Latin America except Cuba, French Guiana, Puerto Rico and Lesser Antilles (except for Aruba, Curaçao and Trinidad and Tobago).

Route Markers are yellow and red flags that mark the places where teams must go.

During the race, teams may encounter obstacles that may affect their position: When the Intersection was introduced in season 2, it had drastically different rules than the American version.

Teams then have to follow clues and Route Markers that will lead them to the various destinations and tasks they will face.

Modes of travel between these destinations include commercial and chartered airplanes, boats, trains, taxis, buses, and rented vehicles provided by the show, or the teams may simply travel by foot.

In some legs, the first teams to arrive at the Pit Stop win prizes, usually from the show's sponsors.

Introduced in season 3, no-rest legs were introduced as similar to the eighteenth season of the American version, with the first team to arrive winning a prize and their next clue, and the last team having to complete a Speed Bump on the following leg.